how hard is this game to learn?

[BooQueefius]

as someone who dose not play a lot of civ like/rts how hard is this game to learn

[talgaby]

The basics are easy, since there is an entire tutorial campaign that tells everything from unit selection to dealing with complex objectives.
There are also tons of campaigns in the full version, where you can learn different tactics and get familiar with a handful of civilisations.

There are also AI matches in Standard game to hone the skills further.

All and all, the simple tactics are easy to learn.
To play it good… that takes time. You need to learn the difference among all civilisations, each unit type (what they are good/bad against, basics stats, and so on), learn to manage economy (macro) and battlefield tactics (micro)…

The good news is that you can learn many of those even against that AI.

If you want to play MP, both Steamworks and the Voobly client have plenty of low-skill players to go against. Steam has more cheating angry little kids, Voobly has a much stronger anti-cheat/desync protection, but it takes a bit of time to set it up for the HD version. (It also has somewhat of a smaller player base.)

There are tons of tutorial videos online for this game, but I would greatly suggest looking them up after playing a few campaigns. They are rather scripted, so you can learn the basics in controlled levels.

Although if you are really new to RTS games, you may be better if you tried some easier ones, like Red Alert 2. The Command & Conquer series in general is the most noob-friendly, most dumbed-down RTS franchise with actual depth. (Blizzard's War/StarCrafts are even more dumbed down, but their playing options are even more limited, since they boil down to how fast you can click the mouse. C&C is somewhat less click-intensive, although it still relies on massing up tons of tanks and hope for the best.)

[kinkerbel]

Try to learn using all the shortcut buttons on your keyboard straight away. This will give you a big edge in mp if you decide to play that. For the game basics the campaigns are excellent. The standard campaign is great for learning the basics, the dlc campaigns feel more advanced and also learn you the value of things like raiding. If you still do not manage, try watching some aoe streams/channels spirit of the law (there you can learn a lot about all the secret mechanics), T90(casts most of the top player matches) .
Most of the playerbase in multiplayer are really good players, do not get dissapointed if you get rekt.

[DeliriousTiberius]

DO you have a favorite keyboard layout. The default one is good but I feel like there is an elite keyboard shortcut layout I can start to use that I don't know about.

[Brick Slayer]

Yeah, it's pretty hard to figure everything out. At least if you want to survive a round in multiplayer without getting destroyed immediately, that is

[WSlord]

As been said easy to learn, tough to master.
The in game tutorial is excellent for learning gameplay.
There is a vast amount of depth to this game though and I've played it since orignal release. Multiplayer will be a tought nut. Everymap, nation, and unit has little differences that can mean a lot and learning this takes alot of practice and experince.
Tooth and Tail is also a easy RTS to learn the ropes if you have zilch experince.
Sales coming, goes cheap without DLC, you can refund if you don't like it, but lots of single player fun, custom games in the workshop, and multiplayer both seriouse and unseriouse.

[Trollie74]

As written above: easy to learn, difficult to master, that sums it up for me.

[Phil khajeets]

It is easy but takes a lot of time to find buttons and press it meanwhile in mp people shortcut everything and do 6different tasks in 2 secs and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you

[IamJeo]

Hi. This is RTS, the learning curve can be steep, but don't let that bother you. It is challenging, wayyyy more challenging than other games (that, imo, are pretty trivial and boring compared to this), BUT the satisfaction and fun gained is also deeper.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/75vlqk/does_anyone_else_hate_dark_age_starts/do9bl11/ has a brief line explaining how I enjoy the game, for example.

Bruce Lee said it well:

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.

So best way to get into it is to start playing and finding your way of enjoying the game: there are many ways eg. ai-scripting (aiscripters.net), modding, scenario playing/crafting, campaigns, Multiplayer. I assume you mean MP.

It may be helpful to have somewhat strategic mindset as you delve into the game, it makes some things more tangible, giving flesh to ideas of ingame movements. If you're interested in medieval warfare or military strategy in general, it serves you well. Here is some elaboration on that: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/7bwlmb/how_did_you_git_gud/dpld5p7/

Also there is adeptly summarized my overall view of what makes the game interesting (=~fun) to play and learn.

Explanation(s) on why Build Orders are great and should be used: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/5js96x/tips_for_beating_the_hd_moderate_ai/dbio9d7/ and KillerB's series that is linked via https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/7bwqbe/conquering_your_inner_noob_2_scouting/

Watching this killerb series from ep. 1 is very nice starting point overall, to get a grasp of abilities gained, it gives nice metrics to measure progress aside victories, if you like that sort of self-improving method.

I'm not sure if I overlooked something, so let me throw more applicable Bruce Lee quotes at you instead:

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

_____________________________________________

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1182600430 is a nice guide that has some explanation as to what the community currently looks like.

_____________________________________________

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/wiki/index is a nice community-resource for a variety of things, from how-to-begin basics to more advanced MP strategy.

[Tatsuya Hiroki]

The single player campaigns are managable once you know the basic good strategies and methods, playing online is however not exactly something I would recommend to jump on instantly, especially since there is a high chance of veteran people (people who played the game back in the retail version days) kicking your butt like no tomorrow

[talgaby]

Well, there are low-level/newbie/noob lobbies and rooms made for this purpose.

[NIKFS]

Easy to learn hard to master, i started playing this (aoe2 cd version back then) with 6 and while i obviously wasnt good i had my fun too^^ currently my little brother who is 8 likes to play the mac version on my mothers old macbook to play the tutorial over and over again, its not hard id rather say due to how aoe works its one of the easiest rts to pick up but it can be very complicated later on^^

[Nero]

If you can't learn how to hunt a boar effectively you can completely forget MP.